Why I won't send my girls to an English nursery by Lisa Marie Presley

Elvis's daughter lives in the English countryside with her husband and twin three-year-old daughters

She prefers the rather wetter East Sussex to the sunshine of California.But when it comes to her children’s education, Lisa Marie Presley remains an American at heart.The daughter of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, who lives in the English countryside with her husband and twin three-year-old daughters, plans to shun the local nurseries and delay sending her girls to school until they are five or six ‘as that’s the age they start in the States’.

In an interview on Radio 2, she told presenter Jo Whiley: ‘I am reluctant to send them to school. I just don’t want to shove them off so early.’

The 44-year-old believes that British children join the education system too early. ‘I’m stunned when I see the age range,’ she said. ‘I understand working parents need to do it, but I don’t want to lose them that quick. I’ll go crazy when they all go to school as I won’t know what to do.’Legally, children in the UK do not have to start school until the term after they turn five. Many schools have nurseries attached to them, but attendance is not compulsory.

Miss Presley flitted between England and California for several years before taking permanent residency in the UK in August 2010, when she moved to an £8million stately home in West Sussex with her fourth husband, guitarist Michael Lockwood, and daughters Harper and Finley. The singer, who also has two grown-up children from previous marriages, admitted she preferred her new home because the English are more friendly. ‘In California the people are so self-absorbed.I lived in the same neighbourhood for 17 years and I don’t think I met a neighbour,’ she confessed. ‘When I moved here I was getting notes and flowers and people reaching out to me, and I just thought it was incredible. There’s a quality of life over here that I needed and I just found it very refreshing. ‘The locals are also pretty protective of me, which I really found charming as I’d never experienced that before.’

Miss Presley, a Scientologist, has been married four times. Her previous husbands include the late Michael Jackson and actor Nicolas Cage.She has two adult children from her first marriage to musician Danny Keough – actress Danielle Riley, 23, and Benjamin, 19.Last month, Miss Presley revealed her love for the English way of life – and the odd game of darts over a cold pint of Guinness. ‘The civility, the culture, the people and its beauty have reawakened me and have smoothed out some of my bleak and jagged views about people and life,’ she said. ‘I can honestly say I am the only person who came to England for the cold and the rain . . . that, it seems, and the pleasures of a good old-fashioned English country pub.’